co-authors are other participants quoted. I haven't changed content of thr replies, but quoted it part by part in my replies, interspersing each reply after relevant part. Sometimes I have also changed the order of replies with my retorts, so as to prioritate logical/topical over temporal/chronological connexions. That has also involved conflating more than one message. I have also left out mere insults.

Russian Orthodox sources from same time (under Lithuanian supremacy or under the Czars) would have given similar age limits.

Resist Meta-Man!

Evolutionary biologists are discussing whether we have passed or will be passing the next evolutionary big step. Resumée of big steps so far - according to evolution:

1.) self reproducing molecules join hands in protocaryatide cells;

2.) those in eucaryatide cells;

3.) those in many celled animals;

4.) ants, bees and maybe now men join hands in hives;

5.) not to mention that all the train companies ruined by Vanderbilt, all the petrol companies ruined by Rockefeller and so on were bought up by the capitalists who ruined them - unlike the other steps one that has really been ascertained.

If humanity becomes a hive, it is termed a "meta man"*. Of which men all over earth, domestic animals, machines, buildings, textiles, satellite communications all over the globe are organs, just as DNA inmitochondria, mitochondria in our cells, our cell in ourselves. The final steps to meta man would include:

a) mankind stopping wars between its men,

b) mankind regulating the procreation of men,

c) the development of a consciousness of mankind, that is really the consciousness of noone in particular, reached by immediate majority votes on the smallest details of things which in their whole are beyond - or are put beyond - single men.

This last step is supposed to be a parallel to the human consciousness being the consciousness of no brain cell in particular, only the sum of all brain cells in general.

But this is not what human consciousness is, man being - unlike brain cells and majority votes - endowed with reason, and it will not work like this for "meta man". The elimination of wars and the central control of human fertility - on lines suggested by Monsanto seeds, that will grow and yield fruit only for one generation, after which next year's seed will have to be bought from Monsanto - this will, if at all, not happen because all humans vote through these losses of independence, case for case, though it could be fooled into voting through the principle or a seemingly reasonable application of it in a panicked situation: no, this will, if at all, be controlled by an elite that considers itself to be for mankind what the brain is for a single man.

The simile between man and his organs on one hand, society and its men on the other, is ancient. So is the simile between a leg that has to be amputated for the good of man and a criminal that has to be executed - maybe hunted down first - for the good of society. It was older than the Church and it was used by both Christ and St Paul about the Church: the parallel to execution being excommunication. The problem begins when the simile, a biological picture for non-biological things, is introduced into biology and taken for the biological principle for a new animal. When birth, food, security of life or death of individual men all depend on the BIOLOGICAL needs of a single animal humanity that is fiction - or a misused concept that parodies and hides the real biological needs. Would you like to be "amputated" - killed, starved or sterilised - because you did not dedicate yourself whole-heartedly to serve the hive? Resist "meta man". Resist the beast.

*Source for the speculations: www.pm-magazin.de the paper version of January 2005 issue.

16:13 Racial segregation (on no social ground, since slavery was abolished about 100 years earlier), chemical castration for homosexuality ... two consequences, historically, of segregating public morality from Christian beliefs and letting evolutionists ones intrude.

III

Hans-Georg Lundahl

16:39 "bathing suit styles?"

Abortion, school shootings, they would probably be more worried than I about spread of hash, there is a spread of heroine etc. I think suicide rates are higher, but haven't checked the stats.

Paulogia

School shootings happen in ONE country... the United States. The most secular countries around the world do not have them. This can't be pinned on secular.

Drugs, abortion and suicide are not moral issues... they are unfortunate (in some eyes) choices one makes for oneself.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Nota

ble

school shootings

2.1

North America

2.1.1 United States

2.1.2 Canada

2.1.3 Mexico

2.2

Europe

2.3

South America

2.4

Asia

2.5

Oceania

2.6

Africa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting

Take Mexico which has had a secularist régime since 1917:

Ciudad Juárez school shooting Ciudad Juárez August 24 2011 1 Two cars drove up to an elementary school at around noontime, as parents were waiting for their children to be released from school. The men in the cars started firing assault rifles, killing one man, and wounding four women and one man. The elementary school was placed on lock-down and students were released after the situation was being handled. While the motive of the attack is reported to be unknown, schools in the Ciudad Juárez area have reported receiving threats and extortion demands in the past.[65]

Ciudad Juárez school shooting Ciudad Juárez January 12 2012 1 A 30-year-old man was killed by being shot nine times in front of children at an elementary school as they were leaving for the day. The shooting induced panic from parents of children, some of whom witnessed the shooting. The gunman was unidentified, as of 2012.[66]

Atizapán school shooting Atizapán May 6 2014 1 13-year-old Ricardo Ordonez was shot and killed at a school. 15-year-old Edgar Yoevani was arrested.[67]

Europe has had 20 school shootings since 1983 - not counting the earlier ones.

And as you are in Canada, 12 have happened in Canada since 1980.

"Drugs, abortion and suicide are not moral issues... they are unfortunate (in some eyes) choices one makes for oneself."

Moral issues are about choices one makes for oneself. Even public morality, as in public standards on what politicians can't and can do, must and must not punish, are only there for the sake of building a common private morality, so people can make good choices, or rather are in a better position to do so.

Also, you pretend to defend at home offspring, including teens, against one kind of choice parents could impose on them, but in practise abortion is often imposed on young pregnant teen girls by - guess who? - parents.

Could it be you are so biassed against Young Earth Creationism, you could not take in a simple fact one of this set actually invented something useful?

V

17:51 "we have elected officials"

And in Canada, they are not the calibre of Judge Moore.

"and experts appointed by the officials to set curriculum standards"

Many of whom would be in the evolutionist community, since it is dominant, and many of the evolution believing biologists are either Atheists like Myers or that "Polish American" - Jerry Coyne - on Evolution is True, or else, heavily influenced by this kind of people.

A Christian could be on the expert team - provided he showed some kind of syncretism with the Atheist version.

Realistically, that is.

Seriously, even if the expert team were unbiassed and the politicians unbiassed, not likely to happen, this constitutes too much intrusiveness into the parental rights in education.

Mozart has been hailed as a genius, but the most basic fact about his beginnings in music is, he was a homeschooler with a father having a geek or rather professional level interest and knowledge in musical composition, and the Archbishop of Salzburg - the elected official in that place and time - was content as long as Leopold taught Nannerl and Wolfgang Catholic catechism and a useful job, which musical performance plus composition was and remains to this day.

Any modern school board would simply have been a hindrance, and Leopold Anton Eleutherius Freiherr von Firmian, archbishop of Salzburg (elected on 4th October 1727) and his successors (Jacob Ernest of Liechtenstein-Castelcorno 1744–1747, Andreas Jacob of Dietrichstein 1747–1753, most importantly Sigismund III of Schrattenbach 1753–1771) would not have cared less about the exact details of music curriciulm Leopold taught his family.

Which was good, if they had, they would probably not have allowed the emphasis on the then modern style of Viennese Classicism (or according to some, a predecessor of it called Galanter Stil), they would have imposed a concentration on Church music.

In other words, these days so much is lost in talents due to school curricula imposed by civil authorities, as well as public schooling being responsible for destroyed lives, which gun liberality is then blamed for, or "mental problems", as if the most efficient cure for most would not be to take children or teens out of a traumatising environment.

Kudos to Viced Rhino for homeschooling!

VI

17:55 Minimum standards for health and safety should not be the ban of parental liberty.

They are well in their place on a workplace - where a wage earner is staying to earn money to be a parent with. They are also very welcome on food safety on commercial products, where the parents spend money for feeding their children.

In other words, as long as the constraints are on:

employers

and sellers

and other people many depend on

they are very welcome indeed.

But, what level of radiation or lead from a road is unacceptable is in fact related to things testable here and now, and testable as relating to physical health.

Being an ace within the evolutionist community, it might be socially desirable for some, but it is not physical health and it should also not be imposed on parents.

You show the children you have the best concern you can show them, let others show their own children the best concern that they can, as long as it is not involving Molochism or imposed incest.

VII

18:13 Well, you actually should allow JW parents to ban blood transfusions, there are alternatives.

And if some doctor has got into its head that it is dangerous for "sexual development" that this Catholic family even allows the teens to fast as adult Catholics, chuck the doctor!

But again, a doctor meddling in physical health is not nearly as intrusive, since much more limited in scope, as experts deciding on what can be taught about the past of Earth before there were men to record it by observations transmitted to their posterity. Or on how far out the Universe reaches beyond where we have gone, or on how sure we can be there is a space program etc.

These things are not for doctors or any other expert to decide for parents. Experts can decide what can be taught in their institutions, fine, it's their institution, by hypothesis.

VIII

(misparsing paused subtitles)

18:22 So, you are in fact making "science education" a factor of mental health, by implication stamping Young Earth Creationism as mental unhealth.

In other words, you are involved in a kind of war of extermination against Young Earth Creationism, not too unlike what Canada was doing to Indians and Esquimaux about 1890 to 1970!

It's atrocious.

[While it would be, I got him wrong, partly, since "science education" belonged to next set:]

IX

(parsing them right)

18:26 "future of our country"

Look, Adolf Hitler also believed he had a right to dictate how parents educated children, for the future of Germany.

Not quite as atrociously as you, though (even though he totally abolished homeschooling), but by having a set of organisations harrassing parents over allowing or demanding of children to do sufficient gymnastics and so on.

"technology" and "economy" don't depend on hammering in one ideology.

Unlike what you seemed to imagine a week ago, Damadian did invent the MRI basic technology. As for his not getting the Nobel Prize, come on, it is in Sweden! I am a Swede, I know the country, people like you have too much power over other people there.

That Karolinska would prefer others than Damadian might be because his own contribution was not so much the medical part (Karolinska is obviously in medicine), but that he was a Young Earth Creationist can certainly also have contributed to his being overlooked ("det låg honom ganska säkert i fatet" as we say in Sweden).

18:49 Your friend would not have been too dissatisfied with being a good wife and playing piano well, if she had not come under the company where people like you consider that inadequate. She may be blaming her parents for what she is going through, I am blaming guys like you!

Math education of young Mozart : "the shortest phrase which can have an Absatz is four measures, count to four" etc.

Why should there be math or science minima at all!

X

Hans-Georg Lundahl

16:59 Did you in the radio interview actually say you wanted a curriculum imposed on homeschoolers?

If so, that was a fairly Communist thing to say - fairly disrespectful to parents' rights in rearing their children, while at home.

Paulogia

I did not advocate curriculum... I advocate for some level of bare minimum standards. (e.g. counting and reading... things not currently required)

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Salzburg was not requiring Mozart to irrational numbers, and his dad was only requiring the fractions useful in music. As to reading and writing, have you seen his letters? The German could best be translated by the English dialect used for Li'l Abner. If Die Zauberflöte is in standard German, it is Schikaneder (OK, he did write Bastien und Bastienne ... or not, the standard German in that is due to Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern, Johann Heinrich Müller, Johann Andreas Schachtner).

He knew Italian better than German, in a way, due to Italian being the language of music, not least of opera.

I like the law as it is.

And if you were into teaching evolution in science, that is way beyond "three Rs". Don't get me wrong. I think creationist parents do a very good thing if familiarising the children with evolution as long as not themselves perpetrating full and exclusive immersion into it. My ma not only did not stop evolutionist relatives from gving me evolutionist material, but also did not stop me from freely reading and studying it - even before giving me any explicitly Young Earth Creationist material.

B u t, requiring it by decision of an expert committee, as a precondition for homeschooling? No.

XI

19:05 If a math standard and a science standard should at all be imposed on all children, which, as said, I do not think, I find it peaceful in a way to accept Christians, but I find it less peaceful to require them to be geeks, or Fachidioten. In fact, if the word "with a math education" and "with a science education" mean anything, it is about contrast with people without such, and we are not speaking of Mozart or Li'l Abner. People like that don't come in committees.

So, the real meaning of "without science education" means having less of it than the experts, and that means the real meaning of "having a science education" is being an expert.

Obviously a standard should not include sth which is wrong. A science standard set by AiG and CMI (who encourage parents to teach evolution as what many scientists argue, and most scientists at present believe) would not be as objectionable as one set by someone evolutionist.

But the problem is, both the evolutionist and the creationist would be overvaluing the intrinsic educational value of the issue.

And experts on both sides have a stake set in this game.

19:09 "regardless of their religious beliefs"

No. It is precisely a religious preference on which one can at all require parents to any common effort in parenting. The Catholic Church requires parents to see the children learn Catechism and see they are baptised at 8 days, if not sooner, and see that they are able to (both morally and as per occasions given) to approach the sacraments.

The Protestants required reading as a means of reading the Bible.

When we come to "three Rs", we are dealing with people exchanging Protestantism for commerce and science as their real religion, hence the addition of "Rithmetic".

Anything beyond the common religion is the hobby of the parents, basically.

So, any reasonable standard would reasonably only be based on a religious belief. The one which is reasonable to Paulogia is obviously scientism, that is why he would like a science minimum to be set.

So, as well as being nonsensical, the requirement cannot really be met either. The requirement could be met in the sense of "regardless of their confessional background", but that would not be the whole of their religious belief. The idea of such a committee would indeed be, in itself, a religious statement.

Put a Catholic for five minutes in such a committee, let him be the greatest scientist and mathematician you can imagine, he will not help it set a standard, but tell them, the idea of their committee violates the IV Commandment (the one which certain confessions call the V : honouring the parents).

II

20:03 Demonstrating a flaw in someone's argument by inserting words he did not use and applying his principles to cases he did not envisage is in fact not a strawman.

Only attributing to someone a principle he does not hold, an argument he has not made, is a strawman.

Ken Ham was illustrating that you consider, as Atheists, that chance (with some help of natural law, also present in the building) was responsible for what came out in the end as a useful, purposeful order.

Calling that out as bogus is not a strawman.

20:12 "you were never a real atheist"

Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn't, and perhaps he thought he was one.

For my part, I didn't get as far as thinking that, but I thought I was a big bang and evolution believer - though as most such, I did not use the word "believer" about it.

The point is, some Christian heresies (not Catholicism) say that a real Christian person can never cease to be a Christian. They base this on the Bible words, mostly, which mean that the real Christian Church could never cease to be the Christian Church. But I bet Calvin Smith would admit at least you thoughht you were a Christian, even with those errors in exegesis on those passages.

On some issues, I think I have outdated some positions of AiG and CMI. But I don't think they are deliberately dishonest (except perhaps with reading my letters with attention focussed on arguments, as I send in articles on "news items of interest"). I think they are slow in changing paradigm.

Some YEC paradigms have had their day.

XIII

22:28 In fact, the State perhaps does not need to fund everyone's education.

One school law passed in Scottish Parliament required all nobles to send their children to school - why? Because these were the future élite of the country.

Most parts of Europe, the children not required to go to school, unless required by parents to attend this or that apprenticeship or working on farm, could go to school if they wanted to.

But if states should continue funding, one could attach standards as requirement of funding, but not of homeschooling as such.

XIV

22:38 Limiting Ken Ham's sales?

Not sure my idea will help, but if you'd like to sell some alternative Young Earth Creationist material, which could compete, here is my blog:

Fighting Totalitarian takeovers?

"Just war doctrine attempts to define situations wherein the waging of war becomes a moral necessity. It lays out criteria by which a Christian is intended to determine whether or not a specific war was entered into and is conducted in a virtuous manner, that killing becomes a moral necessity. The doctrine was developed by theologians of great influence in much of non-Orthodox Western Christianity, such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. This principle was the underpinning of Roman Catholic doctrinal support for the Crusades, presumably including the Fourth Crusade."

Pope Innocent III certainly thought that the war he was planning against the Saracens was just: not that the sack of Constantinople, which he had expressly forbidden, was; though he took advantage of that injustice after it was committed. A doctrine does not cease to be true because it can be or even has been misapplied.

"By contrast, Orthodox Christianity has never developed an explicit "just war" doctrine, and the weight of Tradition is that the taking of human life is never a morally edifying act, although circumstances may require that such an act be taken, it would only be as an alternative to an even greater evil."

The Roman Catholic doctrine about just war IS precisely that war is only just when the alternative is a greater evil, i e an extremely unjust "peace" tantamount to slavery under robbers or something like that. It may be added that one of the criteria is a reasonable hope to really avoid the evils greater than those of not fighting.